The South is a big region in a big country.That's the main thing. We're "so deep into that landscape we did not realize/ we'd been talking in accents all our lives"
--Pierce Pettis, "Little River Canyon"

Monday, March 16, 2009

The Horseshoe Bend Regional Library Bookmobile

A great writer friend called this weekend, excited about writing a piece about a trip down memory lane. Her first job was at a Carnegie library in her Southern hometown. The Carnegie libraries were wonderful gifts from a wealthy benefactor. What a treasured windfall for impoverished regions: a beautiful brick library filled with first-rate books.

This of course spun me down my own memory lane trip. Many, in speaking of their Southern towns and cities, say: 'We've got everything. It may not be top level, but we've got it.' In my rural south, we didn't have much of anything. Not even enough people to warrant a free brick library. What we did have was the Horseshoe Bend Regional Library Bookmobile. It pulled up every Thursday in front of the WPA era rock building that housed the Extension Service and 4-H Club. Miss Evie Wade, the retired and beloved 2nd Grade teacher who had taught every kid in the southern part of the county for the last 50 years, sat at a desk in the room where the books were shelved. She would call your mama in her thick genteel Georgia accent if you did not return a book on time.

The 4-H Club and the Horseshoe Bend Regional Library Bookmobile were the sum total of offerings for us rural kids for the entire long stretch of hot summer. For 4-H Club, the summer offered time to fill up the pages of a record book, a ledger type affair where 4-Hers recorded all the work they had accomplished for whatever projects they had signed up for. I despised sewing and anything requiring me to sit still for very long. In a desperate move, with nothing at all appealing to me in the 'girl' category, I signed up for Food Preservation. Surely, I thought, I could do that. My mother, delighted, supplied me with a stove-top pressure canner and what seemed to me a half ton of fresh green rattlesnake snap beans bought from local farmers. Snap beans--for those of you unknowledgable in the rules of pressure canning--require a gazillion minutes at the highest pressure. This means to process green beans the stove had to be turned up on highest heat and the pressure canner meter's needle monitored carefully. If the needle was too low, the temperature would not have been sustained long enough so that six months later the family might die of botulism. If the needle moved too high into the RED ZONE, the pressure canner might blow up, leaving the kitchen in shambles and me in a burn unit. I was 10 years old.

So my memory of the entire summer is this. In the mornings I would wash green beans and worry over them, making sure all the troublesome strings were removed before I snapped them ready for the sterilized canning jars. Then later in the afternoon in the un-airconditioned July Deep South kitchen, I scooted the kitchen stool just as far away from the stove as I could and still be able to see the position of the meter's needle. There, perched on the stool, I greedily read every Laura Ingalls Wilder book I could lay my hands on, all the way from childhood in the deep pioneer woods, to the prairie days, to the wonderful These Happy Golden Years when she became a happily married young woman. I read other books as well, lots of them, and magazines like American Girl and The Saturday Evening Post and The Atlantic. I read grown up books, too: The Hounds of the Baskervilles, collections of horror stories involving ghost ships in the Atlantic, and several books I knew I was not supposed to be reading. The ghost books made me shudder cold as sweat tickled down my back. Fortunately my busy mother trusted me to sit there and can beans and dutifully record the amount in my record book and pretty much left me alone as long as I did not blow up the kitchen or seriously injure myself.

Recently I heard the wonderful poet Louie Skipper describe the state library in Montgomery where his working mother parked him when she had to go to the state capitol for meetings. I at first was envious when I heard this and all the incredible books he read at such an early age.

But Laura Ingalls Wilder was probably the right choice for me at the time. She made being a pioneer girl seem exciting and glamorous. Eating roasted pig parts and swimming in ponds and getting leeches: I could relate. She made it seem normal to be a girl who loved to run wild in the woods.

1 comment:

Anita, you make me feel guilty for my fond memory of the library in Decatur, Alabama, and all those privledges therein. But you know what, all writers need to tell their library stories, and I think you ought to find a magazine that will let you edit the special edition of the magazine!

me

Website: www.amgarner.com

Video of Co. Rd 14 Tour

View the new video with me narrating a tour of County Rd. 14 at www.amgarner.com and click on HEAR ANITA.

Frank's Peas

Talking in Accents: Diversity in Southern Fiction

It is easy to make up characters who live in double-wide mobile homes, wear beehive hairdos and feed caps, never put a 'g' on the end of a participle...; who aspire only to own a bass boat, eat something fried, speak in tongues. What is difficult is to take the poor, the uneducated, the superstitious, the backward, the redneck...and make them real human beings, with hopes and dreams and aspirations. Tony Earley

Other places to visit (and don't forget to take the County Road 14 Photo Tour, right after POSTS)

UNDENIABLE TRUTHS

The Southland with Blue Sky

County Road 2 Tour

When you turn onto County Rd. 2 in early September, look for the Dove Hunt signs, which mean that on the following Saturday, a dove hunt will be organized in one of the fields.

Dove Hunt Here

Drive through five or so miles of rolling fields and suddenly you find you have arrived at the scene of the Dove Hunt. A truck is parked near the main road (Co. Rd. 2) and a man sits at a table, signing in participants and spelling out the rules. The hunt takes place in the large fields where corn has been harvested. (You can see the stubble around the Dove Hunt Here sign.) The doves love to scavenge the fields for spilled grain.

Cotton on Gunwaleford Road

The view from the front doors of the church.

Sunrise: Picking Peas off County Rd. 2

Drive five or six more miles through County Rd. 2's fields and you'll come to a crossroads.I got this shot just as the sun was peaking over the horizon in one of the big fields off Gunwaleford Rd. ( County Rd. 2 is also called Gunwaleford Road.) Frank Johnson's ancestors lived on this land while it was still a reservation. He plants a large field every year in corn and another in the best purple-hulled peas you've ever eaten. When the corn and, later, peas are ready to harvest, he starts calling all the neighbors. The best thing to do is to get up before dawn to pick peas. The fields are cool and the only sound is the breeze. It took my husband and me two hours to pick plenty of peas to eat now and freeze for later. The morning glories climb the stalks of the pea plants.

Morning glory

The peas in the fields are covered in morning glories that are open for sun rise.

Pea Sheller

Spending two hours picking peas is one thing. Spending eight hours shelling them is another. My suggestion: take them to the pea shelling machine. Other cool stuff at this store: sticky paper spider traps, local honey, good waterproof duck hunting boots. The proprietor is a friendly guy who will give you helpful hints about pea picking and how to store the peas spread out to dry overnight for the best results from the pea shelling machine.

Coldwater Seed and Supply

Home of the pea sheller. OK, technically you have to drive back into town for this, but if you've picked several bushels of peas, believe me, it's worth it.

The Lake Winks Silver

Further out Gunwaleford Road is Sunset Beach on the Tennessee River, within sight of the Natchez Trace bridge. This part of the Tennessee is Pickwick Lake, smallmouth bass heaven. The large hybrid striped bass also have seasonal runs. Catfish up to 100 lbs. have been caught in the locks at Pickwick Dam. Windsurfing days are best in spring and early fall when the seasonal changes bring wind warnings for area lakes.

Coon Dog Cemetery

Continuing the tour, bring a camera, a cooler, and some tick spray. It's a short ride to the Coon Dog Cemetery.

Head stone at the Coon Dog Cemetery

If you take Co. Rd. 2 all the way to the Natchez Trace Bridge and then follow the Trace across the Tennessee River, you will enter Colbert County where the Coon Dog Cemetery is found.

Head stone at the Coon Dog Cemetery

I can't imagine naming a dog High Pocket. When I'm naming a dog, I always try to envision what I would feel like calling the name loudly if the dog became lost. "Here, High Pocket." No, I don't think so. Too impersonal. But I love High Pocket's stone, love the way the dog is waiting on his/her master, or maybe just stretched out in the shade of the porch in an Alabama August. Someone really loved High Pocket.

November 1

They just couldn't leave

Some of the white pelicans stayed through the summer.

January

Thanksgiving Morning, 2014.

START YOUR TOUR with Coosa County Road 14

This just about sums it up. Literally and figuratively.

A Rocky Ford

Before there was a road, wagons forded the creek on these rocks. To the left just out of the frame is a large white sand bar. The bluff in the background climbs up a hundred feet or so and is covered in mountain laurel laced with wisps of Spanish moss. Where North Alabama meets South Alabama.

Geocaching. Sort of.

Locking in coordinates.

MORE COOSA. Geocaching, sort of.

Dovetailed logs on corner of cabin.

Interior logs

The cabin has log walls inside.

one of the deer paths

Ammonium nitrate makes the grass green and sweet

No one agrees when I say we should use the hose to spray off the mud

...standing beside muddy Jeep tires

Moss grows on the flat rocks

Waverly in Alabama

Waverly can play a reel fast and pure enough to make your heart spin.

Sears Chapel Church

Built right before the Civil War by my relatives who made furniture down the hill on Hatchett Creek, Sears Chapel held services only on the first Sunday of the Month. There was an outhouse, no air conditioning, plenty of wasps circling the light fixtures that hung from chains from the high ceilings. More often than not, we were late for services so we just drove on by and looked for somewhere to have Sunday lunch. Kowaliga was a favorite. Or barbecue at Cotton's. Growing up I kept my clothes in a pine wardrobe built by the same people who built the church. My daughter's dresses hang there today.

Coosa County Musicians

Think of this photo as you read "The Mayor of Nowhere" in UNDENIABLE TRUTHS.

Churchyard

This is where we're all buried. Except the ones who died before the church was built. They're buried out in the woods, and every twenty years or so, we visit the graves. To make sure they haven't just up and left.